Posted
by
timothyon Wednesday August 06, 2014 @03:26PM
from the presto-change-oh dept.

New submitter redseo writes Xiaomi, known as the Apple of China, and recently enjoying its new-found fame and glory in the Indian market, has achieved yet another milestone. It has overtaken Samsung, to become China's best selling smartphone manufacturer, in Q2 2014. Xiaomi sold total of 15 million smartphones in China in Q2, which is a three-fold increase from a year ago.
That's pretty good for a company founded only four years ago, with no stores of its own. (And though Xiaomi's phones are not widely sold in the U.S., they're offered by third-party sellers on Amazon and elsewhere; CNet has mostly good things to say about the company's Mi 3.)

For decades the best selling car in China was made by a Chines company, but strangely looked exactly like a Buick which was being manufactured in China by GM.

Telling me that the best selling product is a home grown product in a controlled economy is useless, sorry.

Then the hype is spread to India, which has massive amounts of poverty. If the Chinese made phone is cheap, guess what phone Indian consumers will purchase (considering many people can't afford a phone at all, let alone a cell phone)? No big shock, the Chinese made phone.. *sigh*

Really? When was the last time an American was arrested on American soil by the Chinese police?

Even if you spend time in both countries (as I do), you have a far greater chance of being arrested by American police. On a per capita basis, American citizens are four times as likely to be incarcerated as Chinese citizens.

China might not be a technically a "free market," but if there's any bit of electronics you want to buy there, it's available for sale even if it is officially banned.

Video game consoles in China have been officially banned since 2001. Guess what I see when I go to the mall in China? Xbox 360s, Playstation 3s, Wiis. I've been told that even next gen consoles like the PS4 has made it to storefronts in China before the official launch date (through gray market means via Hong Kong).

At a macro level, China is not a "free market" but rather a managed economy. At the micro level, though, everything is for sale.

Compared to what? Banned products, or products that the Chines government limits to ensure that Chinese companies are profitable?

I have the Redmi Note, bought via Singapore, and it's easily the best phone I have used (my job means I get a lot of phones so at hand I have iPhones, Samsung Galaxy, Nokia 625, a couple of Blackberries, and a few assorted other Androids).

The thing is, on specs alone it's a decent phone - the 1.7GHz octacore CPU isn't the absolute fastest in the world, but it's more than capable of running anything currently available on Android very smoothly and without hesitation. 2GB RAM means multitasking is no problem, and the screen is bright and clear. MIUI 5 is clear, nice to look at and has many thoughtful shortcuts and UI helpers that make it very engaging to use. It's clearly built as a workhorse rather than a prestige product, with a lot of plastic and some flex, but the design is nice enough and the build quality reasonable. It all works quite seamlessly, with very few shortfalls and irritations, so the Redmi Note is nicer to use than phones like the iPhones, Nokias and Galaxies.

More than that though, is that it cost less than AU$180 outright, so compared to any other sub-$200 phone, it's astonishing. It deserves to be a best seller in any market, not just China, and I suspect companies like Samsung, HTC, LG, Microsoft and Apple will be looking at it with real fear in their hearts.